Small stocks with strong earnings are cheaper. You can even buy them through an index fund

In the trenches we call them the generals. They are the big-dollar stocks, the companies that make up the Standard & Poors 500. Most of the Generals go up year after year, and they buy back lots of their shares. We stock pickers hate them--and with good reason. A machine, buying shares of the S&P 500, has beaten the vast majority of stock pickers--including 77% of those who ran mutual funds over the past five years. It makes us all look bad.

Most professional investors, including me, scorned index funds for years. I used to think, heck, if I just picked...